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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The commercials don't make this look very good, but it's actually very funny. It's sort of a Starsky & Hutch comical take on the concept, but it's not a remake, it's a return to the idea with some great gags and some nice nods to the original. Jonah Hill is awesome in this and as much as Channing Tatum has earned my ire in other projects, I have to say he brings the laughs in this one too. A really fun time and definitely worth a watch.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Saturday, March 10, 2012

When I was a young man I was in love with Tanya Roberts. Being twelve my access to erotica was thankfully limited (whereas I don't know how parents of 12 year olds today lock down the limitless avenues of depravity that are so readily available to their kids). But in those days movies like "Sheena" were all it took to make all my adolescent dreams come true.

Tanya Roberts is Sheena, a Tarzan ripoff who was, instead of being raised in Africa by apes, raised in Africa by a tribe who protect a secret of healing earth or something. I'm not sure why white people are always being abandoned to become the King or Queen of the jungle, but that's the story so whatever.

Anyway, "Sheena" was not the best movie in the world, but it gave an adolescent kid a glimpse into the awesomeness of Tanya Roberts. That may not be selling it very well, but I'm recovering from a hamstring injury so I've been drinking a lot of vodka to offset the pain, so I may not be the best person to ask.

All I can say is that I have these great nostalgic moments of pausing this movie at strategic times during the bathing scene to get just a glimpse of a fully naked Tanya Roberts, which I'm pretty sure is a lot better than what kids today are able to do after their parents go to bed.

Anyway, I'm just trying to say that for that reason this movie is still awesome to me, so there it is.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

The second season of a show where Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant torture their friend Karl Pilkington by sending him overseas to do things other people can only dream about has Karl living out everybody else's bucket list.

I love this show. I think Karl is my hero. He's afraid to do these things, but he still does them. Stephen and Ricky just phone in from time to time to laugh at him, but he's out there doing it.

When Conan the Barbarian became successful it spawned a lot of imitators back in the 80's, Beastmaster being the best and Ator and Hawk the Slayer representing the worst. But closer to the top is this movie, which starred Lee Horsley (who later became famous as Matt Houston) as a deposed Prince who uses an awesome three-bladed sword to fight an evil King played by Richard Lynch who took over the land with the help of a demon sorcerer played by Richard Moll.

Lots of fun people are in this movie, which has a lot of good action, misadventure and hardcore bloodletting. A really good product of the 80's and a credit to this short-lived subgenre.

I won't spend a lot of time on this one. Lucio Fulci didn't just throw his hat in the zombie ring back in the day. He apparently contributed this addition to the sword and sorcery subgenre made popular by the original Conan film.

This one doesn't offer much to the genre. For all the unrepentant gore and unnecessary nudity it's pretty boring and fairly incomprehensible. It plays out like one of those Turkish movies that just rips stuff off from American movies.

Fulci had a knack for underwater sequences. There's a fun bit where the good guy gets rescued by dolphins that reminds me of the shark scene in Zombie as far as the quality is concerned.

The rest is just a guy with the laser bow from the D&D cartoon teaming up with a guy with caveman numchuks to fight a bunch of guys in monkey suits who worship a naked chick in a papier mache helmet.

I'd link to the trailer, which is on YouTube, but there's too much nudity in it. Check that out on your own if you want to see what I'm talking about.